Wo. So there is a good chance a lot of these boards have no third party SATA/RAID controllers?

Does that also mean we'll be able to use SSD caching w/ nice large HDD arrays?

Yes.

Quote:

"Users will benefit from ASUS SSD Caching, which uses solid state drive speeds to intelligently accelerate frequently-accessed tasks and applications. Offering speeds up to three times faster than mechanical hard drives in most applications, ASUS SSD Caching features an exclusive user interface and storage control options that boosts performance with one click."